From the Desk of the Executive Director

Ken Phillips is co-founder and Executive Director of Independent Contractors of Australia. He is a published authority on independent contractor issues and directs research on related commercial and trade practices issues. Through his numerous articles in newspapers and think-tank and academic journals, Ken is known for approaching issues from outside normal perspectives and is frequently sought out for media comment.

One of the most arrogant aspects of Australia’s industrial relations system is the treatment of workers as if they are stupid and cannot make decisions for themselves.

The existing superannuation system takes this assumption to high levels. It assumes that workers are so dumb that they must not be allowed to decide where their retirement superannuation money is parked. More...

On current form, the Turnbull Government won’t have the numbers in the Senate to pass the reforms recommended by the Heydon Royal Commission into union corruption. This predicted failure is of the government’s own making.

The cause is as I’ve explained in articles over the last two days (here and here). The government is presenting the Heydon report as a union condemnation report. It is not. It is a report exposing corruption in Australian unions and businesses and recommends reforms to fix this. More...

The Coalition parties have a history of failing whenever they attempt workplace reform. Yesterday I explained that the Turnbull government is positioning itself for a fall by promoting the Heydon report as being anti-union.

The report isn’t anti-union; it’s anti-corruption. But by focusing on the report as if it is anti-union, the Coalition presumably believes this will give it political advantage. Wrong! More...

The Turnbull government’s response to the Heydon Royal Commission Report into union corruption sets the scene for policy and political failure. It has responded just as the union movement and Labor hoped they would.

Further, Labor and the unions have already started their process of a slow and steady ‘kill’ of the Coalition on the issue. They have a surprisingly high chance of success. For the government, my perspective is probably a counterintuitive unsettling of their obvious glee over the Heydon report. More...